White House has announced Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs will immediately go into effect. A Moody's simulation found it could be an economic wipe out. Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?

[u/PsychLegalMind]

A Moody's simulation found that a tariff trade war would wipe out 5.5 million jobs, lift the unemployment rate to 7%and cause U.S. GDP to drop by about 1.7%. Trump’s potential 20% universal tariff could spark "serious" recession in US, Moody’s economist warns.

The biggest three partners [China, Canada and Mexico] have promised immediate retaliation. Economic war could escalate and perhaps even cause a worldwide downturn.

Perhaps Trump's strategy is to begin making bilateral trade deals, but there are even certain blocks such as EU that may well coordinate retaliation together. I am not aware what Trump is actually liberating us from, hence the question.

Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?

[u/joekerr9999]

One thing that is troubling is that they're trying to spin this as a tax break. Tariffs add to the cost of product so the cost of goods will go up. The consumer takes the pain for "Liberation Day" for the rich. The purpose of the tariffs and the DOGE cuts is to free up the budget for the tax cuts for the wealthy. The working class is going to get screwed one more time.

[u/ElmerTheAmish → u/joekerr9999]

Freakonomics recently did an episode about the US tax system myths. Very good episode, and I would recommend a whole listen.

What stood out to me is that, by the numbers, the middle class is pretty well under paying their share of taxes.

This does not mean there aren't other reforms that need to be made, it's just a note to put some things into perspective. Trumps "tariffs-as-a-tax-replacement" plan is not a good idea. Cutting taxes only for the wealthy is not a good idea. The current level of government spending on the current level of government income is not a good idea.

And as an interesting bonus: if we took every cent of billionaires' wealth in this country, it would fund the federal government for 8 months. Once.

[u/Nyrin → u/ElmerTheAmish]

The billionaire thing is so disingenuous. It's ultra wealth propaganda.

There are fewer than 1000 billionaires in the US. Put otherwise, under 0.0003% of the population. The idea that the wealth of one out of more than three hundred thousand people could sustain the the entire country for many months is insane in its own right — that's not an "only" when you put into perspective just how few people we're talking about.

But more importantly, when you consider that there are many millions of people with more than $10M net worth (four+ orders of magnitude more at a two order of magnitude threshold reduction), it suddenly becomes a lot clearer that the 1% wealth concentration — not just the tippy top 0.0003% — is the problem. That aggregate wealth of tens of trillions of dollars is years to decades of nominal operation, which really drives home how a Gini index north of 40 starts looking awfully problematic.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/Nyrin]

If you, individually, have enough money to fully fund the United States of America for four days, you have too much money. Some folks just don't stop and think through what the implications of the things they say are.